ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

If you have a tool equipped, much of the time, you're going to want to have tis ability visible on your hotbar. If you happen to equip another tool (say, because you wanted to dig through a wall) then the old tool's ability is still on the bar, but now it means "spend a turn equipping a different piece of gear", and the new tool's ability isn't on the bar unless you specifically think to put it there.

Actually, in general, when I hotbar abilities off of equipped gear, I want that to be the ability of whatever gear I have in that slot (or blank-with-questionmark, if the gear I have int hat slot has no ability) rather than "spend a turn reshuffling gear in possibly nonoptimal ways because you forgot that you swapped that out". I can't think of any circumstances where I'd actually want to equip via hotbar.

+1

+1. My first winner lost a life in a pride because they had to dig a tile in the previous dungeon, so when I go to hit 'psychoport', it turns out that they waste a turn changing to a new tool, followed by getting mass slaughtered by Rak'Shor and his dozen necros and all the minions EVER made. (Damn thing spawned in the start room.)

For that matter, I've had a close call with another character that had upgraded from a regular psychoport to a new randart one with some stat benefits. I hit my button for 'psychoport' and it changes back to the old one. I lived that time, barely, but it's just indicative of the same problem.